From a place of silence

This article discusses two albums of freely improvised music in duo settings recorded during the year following the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. A reflection thereupon takes the form of a paper presented informally as work in progress at the International Network for Artistic Research in Jazz held in Graz, Austria in February 2023, and is included here for subsequent critical correlation and expansion. The 2020–21 pandemic is an important event in the telling of the story in that for the author, and the music community as a whole, it represented a time of limited opportunity in which to work collaboratively in-person with others or in front of live audiences. The eventual lifting of social distancing measures provided impetus and scope for a reawakening and the refocusing of creative identity and purpose through reconnecting with music and musicians. In response, this article concerns itself chiefly with the nature and role of interpersonal relationships in the improvisational setting and how these manifest in acts of creative interplay and embodied action. At the heart of these relationships, space is given to musings around notions of positionality, trust, empathy and love as they relate to the improvisational setting, with attention paid to how these are entwined in the construction of narrative around process and actualization in creative endeavour.